I had a good chat with a friend the other day and the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare, Obama’s health care plan, the health care plan that came to fruition after 30+ years of push) came up. This friend of mine mentioned that even though they (U.S. gov) may be trying to do a good deed, what will happen when all services are taken over and ran by the government?

This was a striking question for me. I hadn’t really thought about this for some time. I have mainly been caught up with the government doing what I see as the best for the common good.

So I leave you, the loyal readers, a few questions for this weekend: could America reach the point where all of its services and main entities are run or have been taken over by the government? Would that ruin America? Is there anything stopping America from getting to that point? Would that make America a bad place to live in?

Entanglements at TNR put together an analysis of the future of American involvement in the world relevant to many areas and due to the Great Recessions’ vacuum effect. As Mandelbaum says at the end, this looks to be anything but benign:

Here the impact of the coming economic constraints on foreign policy will differ from the effects of the downsizing of the financial industry. Reducing the size of banks and other financial institutions will have benign consequences, reducing the risk of a major economic collapse, limiting economically unproductive speculation, and diverting talented people to other, more useful, work. By contrast, the contraction of the scope of American foreign policy will have the opposite effect because the American international role is vital for global peace and prosperity. The American military presence around the world helps to support the global economy. American military deployments in Europe and East Asia help to keep order in regions populated by countries that are economically important and militarily powerful. The armed forces of the United States are crucial in checking the ambition of the radical government of Iran to dominate the oil-rich Middle East. For these reasons, the retreat of the United States risks making the world poorer and less secure, which means that the consequences of the economically-induced contraction of American foreign policy are all too likely to be anything but benign.

Mandelbaum puts this in the perspective of everything tying together – a domino effect of sorts (minus the Communists). In a way, this sounds good to me. I don’t understand why we are spending more money now on foreign affairs and military engagements as we fight against Muslim nihilists who can’t light their car full of explosives on fire, the bomb in their shoe or in their underwear than against the Communist Russians and Chinese decades ago.
Mandelbaum’s new book looks appealing: The Frugal Superpower: America’s Global Leadership in a Cash-Strapped Era.

The numbers of political prisoners in communist Cuba has supposedly lowered:

The Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation said the government was using long-term imprisonment less frequently and turning instead to a strategy of quick arrests and releases apparently to intimidate those who openly oppose its communist system.

It classified 167 inmates as political prisoners – a drop of 34 since January. But the commission also documented 802 brief arrests for dissident activities or beliefs during that time and said many activists were detained only long enough to keep them from holding antigovernment demonstrations.